Version 2.1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was published on 5 June 2018. The guidelines make web content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities and in doing so they make content accessible for everybody. Just look at colour contrast – if the contrast of text on a background is not strong enough then everyone finds it difficult to read.

Alexander Skogbery’s article on the new guidelines gives a great explanation and summary of the new criteria. For example guideline ‘1.4.10 Reflow’ states that users must be able to browse a website using a 320 pixel wide screen without having to scroll horizontally.

Bristol Usability Group is a friendly group for the South West of the UK and run an excellent conference called UXBristol every year in the summer (this year’s has just happened).

Generate ideas

Paper prototyping is a great way to generate lots of ideas at the early stage of a project. Bring the idea into reality by drawing it and it doesn’t matter how good it is. A picture paints a thousand words. When you see it take form you can understand it, talk about it with your team, test it with users and iterate it.

Throw some away

You can also throw ideas away. Paper is much easier to screw up and chuck (recycle) than something digital. Its also cheap and quick.

Sketch credit: Aurora S Melchor, twitter @roarsdraws

Interactive paper?

Sketch, glue, label or stick to make what you need to bring the idea into reality. Be creative.

Rapid paper prototype workshop

I saw a great prototype technique at UXBristol 2016 (2018 has sold out already and I wasn’t quick enough for a ticket, boo) by Sandra Gonzalez, Head of UX at JUST EAT and founder of UX for Change. She developed it while prototyping with kids in educational settings and its just as powerful in other settings. In just 45 minutes you create the prototype, test it, iterate and test it again.

I gave a workshop on it today and had such positive feedback I though I’d share it here.

Use simple, cheap tools

Small notepad – to replicate the size and *feel* of a small smartphone

Post-its & stickers – to navigate around the app when testing

Sharpies/pens – for drawing

I bought materials for 32 people at a total of £9

10 mins to create the prototype

Draw your screens – a new screen per page

Leave Space – leave 5 pages between each screen (you MUST do this)

Show navigation – place dot Stickers on buttons & match the colour to post its

Show pop-ups – by mini post-its

5 mins to test the prototype

Get into groups and test your prototype

Give the person your prototype and ask them to ‘think aloud’ as they view it

Note any problems/improvements

5 mins to iterate

This is why you have 5 blank pages… now you can tear off the screen you want to change and draw a new page

Test again / show and tell

test/iterate as many times as you need to

if you have time you can have a show and tell of ideas and even vote for the best ones to take forward to a digital prototype.

Share and connect with like minded digital professionals at this free evening meetup

Digital Exeter now has a 1000 members and meets in the evening every other month at Jury’s Inn, near the bus station and Vue cinema. It’s free and is for like minded digital professionals to hear talks and network. You can book a place on the Meetup app and the next event is early Sept.

What happened

I went for the first time on Tues 6 July to reconnect with the digital world before returning to work in Nov from maternity leave.

It was relaxed and informal with a bar and a room set up in theatre style. The first talk was on UI/UX design from Honeybe Creative. The second on Cows and technology from Milkalyser which was really fascinating to learn about changing from a government scientist to owning a business and applying for grants as well as setting up data transfer about healthy cows from across the globe.

I really enjoyed the meet and recommend it to others from whatever part of digital you are working in. There was lots of insider information on other digital talks, tech talks and discounts.

Make huge leaps in knowledge from Conferences

Last week I spent three days in Oxford at the Smashing Conference learning from Designers and Developers as they talked about their stories and their craft. Most speakers talked in part about their life and the history of culture – experiences which tied into their craft. Where human and technology mix. It’s aptly named – smashing.

As a Designer I learned most from the UX and Design talks and saw ways that these corresponded to my own work. It was great to gain an insight into Development as well.

The talks

Here are the talks with links to the slides (where available). All of the links and also videos of the talks will be added as they become available.

Design talks

Understanding People – Chris Shiflett
Summary: Perception versus reality. What is right isn’t as important as what is perceived to look right. User’s aren’t stupid, they are human.
Checkout: change blindness (spot the difference in the pictures), ambient signifiers like the chimes on the Toyko tube and the piano stairs that are more fun than easy escalators!

Joining up the dots – Heydon Pickering
Summary: explores the Web as the ultimate outcome of our unique impulse to make systems of shared meaning.
Checkout: punching salads.

Living Design Systems – Jina Bolton
Summary: creating a design system for a large Enterprise company. Design for scale.
Checkout: opensource tool called Theo which converts files to several types automatically.

Design Systems in Difficult Places (no slides yet) – Mark Boulton
Summary: talked about working in challenging places with distributed teams, devolved responsibilities and little understanding of users. Create a design system to create change and not just to create pictures. Mark spoke about his work at Al Jeezera and CERN.
Checkout: stories about GB road team winning the Tour de France by taking a holistic approach and tweaking every possible aspect so that small gains = large overall gain.

Overthinking Design and Embracing Minutia (no slides yet) – Jon Setzen
Summary: good experience is key to happy, loyal customers. It should be holistic and ever evolving.
Checkout: Snoop gets mad, but who should it be at?

Improving On-screen Legibility (no slides yet) – Tobias Frere-Jones
Summary: sub pixel rendering causes problems with legibility. Mosaic effect. Small sizes can be legible as proved by printing press over hundreds of years.
Checkout: his experiments with Mallory to get sizing exact.

Building Great Design Teams – Aaron Walter
Summary: UX teams require Researchers, Designers and Developers. Work together, sit together, respect each other.
Checkout: Many great insights from his work at Mailchimp, including videos being good ways to share research and knowing each others superpowers and kyptonite.

Want to learn about space?

Then come along to the NASA Space apps challenge, 23-24 April 2016. It’s an international get together focused on space exploration that takes place over 48-hours in cities around the world. It happens every year and anyone is welcome to join.

Teams of technologists, scientists, designers, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, developers and students across the globe collaborate to address global needs to life on Earth and life in space.